Revisiting the Impact of Dust Production from Carbon-Rich Wolf-Rayet Binaries

Abstract

We present a dust spectral energy distribution (SED) and binary stellar population analysis revisiting the dust production rates (DPRs) in the winds of carbon-rich Wolf-Rayet (WC) binaries and their impact on galactic dust budgets. DustEM SED models of 19 Galactic WC ``dustars" reveal DPRs of ${\dot{M}}_d\sim 10^{-10}-10^{-6}$ M${}_{\odot }$ yr${}^{-1}$ and carbon dust condensation fractions, ${\chi }_C$, between $0.002-40\%$. A large ($0.1-1.0$ $\mu$m) dust grain size composition is favored for efficient dustars where ${\chi }_C\gtrsim 1\%$. Results for dustars with known orbital periods verify a power-law relation between ${\chi }_C$, orbital period, WC mass-loss rate, and wind velocity consistent with predictions from theoretical models of dust formation in colliding-wind binaries. We incorporated dust production into Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis (BPASS) models to analyze dust production rates from WC dustars, asymptotic giant branch stars (AGBs), red supergiants (RSGs), and core-collapse supernovae (SNe). BPASS models assuming constant star formation (SF) and a co-eval $10^6$ M${}_{\odot }$ stellar population were performed at low, Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC)-like, and solar metallicities (Z = 0.001, 0.008, and 0.020). Both constant SF and co-eval models show that SNe are net dust destroyers at all metallicities. Constant SF models at LMC-like metallicities show that AGB stars slightly outproduce WC binaries and RSGs by factors of $2-3$, whereas at solar metallicites WC binaries are the dominant source of dust for $\sim 60$ Myr until the onset of AGBs, which match the dust input of WC binaries. Co-eval population models show that for "bursty" SF, AGB stars dominate dust production at late times ($t\gtrsim 70$ Myr).

34 pages, 12 figures, 7 tables, Accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (22)

• Binary interaction dominates the evolution of massive stars
• Physical Properties of Wolf-Rayet Stars
• Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis Version 2.1: construction, observational verification and new results
• The Galactic WC stars: Stellar parameters from spectral analyses indicate a new evolutionary sequence
• A multi-wavelength view on the dusty Wolf-Rayet star WR 48a
• The impact of companions on stellar evolution
• A 24 Micron Point Source Catalog of the Galactic Plane from Spitzer/MIPSGAL
• Spatial distribution of Galactic Wolf-Rayet stars and implications for the global population
• The prototype colliding-wind pinwheel WR 104
• CASSIS: The Cornell Atlas of Spitzer/Infrared Spectrograph Sources. II. High-resolution observations
• Unlocking Galactic Wolf-Rayet stars with $\text{Gaia}$ DR2 I: Distances and absolute magnitudes
• Dust Destruction Rates and Lifetimes in the Magellanic Clouds
• Triggered Star Formation Inside the Shell of a Wolf-Rayet Bubble as the origin of the Solar System
• $\eta$ Carinae's Dusty Homunculus Nebula from Near-Infrared to Submillimeter Wavelengths: Mass, Composition, and Evidence for Fading Opacity
• Dust formation, evolution, and obscuration effects in the very high-redshift universe
• The Keck Aperture Masking Experiment: Near-Infrared Sizes of Dusty Wolf-Rayet Stars
• Variable dust emission by WC type Wolf-Rayet stars observed in the NEOWISE-R survey
• Multiwavelength Observations of NaSt1 (WR 122): Equatorial Mass Loss and X-rays from an Interacting Wolf-Rayet Binary
• Mid-Infrared interferometry of dust around massive evolved stars
• A deep near-infrared spectroscopic survey of the Scutum-Crux arm for Wolf-Rayet stars
• Long-term X-ray variation of the colliding wind Wolf-Rayet binary WR 125
• Infrared Observations of the Quintuplet Proper Members using SOFIA/FORCAST and Gemini/TReCS